Starling Bank Creates First UEFA Women’s Fantasy Football

Starling Bank, in its position as the official banking partner of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 tournament, has created the first-ever Fantasy Football game for the event.

Launched this week ahead of the kick-off on Wednesday 6^th July, this is the first time that the Women’s Euros have had a fantasy football competition that fans could take part in — normally these games are exclusive to men’s football, where 8 million people usually play the game.

Grand Prize Available

The new Fantasy Football has been created by the bank as it looks to maximise its role as banking partner for the tournament, boosting the bank’s brand but also helping women’s football to gain more awareness and popularity too.

It stands to be popular as well — according to research released alongside the announcement of the game, around two-thirds of people in the UK believe that women’s football deserves the same exposure as men’s football and include Fantasy Football as part of that.

One in five of those surveyed have also said that they would play a Fantasy Football game.

They have until the eve of the tournament beginning to register their team, where they will have a virtual pot of £84 million to spend on building a squad, with players from across all the competing nations available for selection. Between rounds, players will also be able to make substitutions to remove players eliminated from the tournament.

Of all players who sign up, a randomly selected entrant will be chosen to win the grand prize, which is an eight-seater private box for the Women’s FA Cup Final in 2023 which will be held at Wembley Stadium.

We built Starling bank to give people the bank we thought they deserved. Now, here we are again, launching another industry first, this time for Women’s Football. I hope this gets people talking about the brilliance of women footballers even more — as well as improving people’s budgeting skills!

Helen Bierton, former Olympic athlete and Chief Banking Officer at Starling Bank

Boden Bites Back at Fraud Claims

Starling Bank is famous as the first bank in the UK to be formed by a woman, the CEO Anne Boden. And Boden has been in the news recently as she has defended the bank from accusations levied by Lord Agnew of Oulton.

He claimed that the bank has been one of the worst offenders for failing to properly check the turnover or activity of businesses that applied for financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to potentially millions of taxpayer’s money being spent to cover the lost loans given to fraudulent applicants.

Boden has now challenged Agnew to provide evidence of his claims, and has insinuated that the bank may consider legal action if he does not. So far, Agnew has claimed that the onus is on the bank to provide evidence first before he withdraws his statements, but now that Boden has accused Agnew of defamation it remains to be seen whether he will change his stance.

Your statements are defamatory, and I must ask you to withdraw them. You say that you have no information to support your accusations, but you continue to repeat them despite Starling making it clear that you are wrong. Starling reserves all its rights in relation to your defamatory statements.

Anne Boden, Starling Bank CEO, directed at Lord Agnew